Social Media Doesn’t Really Change Anything

POSTED IN Blog | TAGS : business, marketing, social media
12.06.2009

That’s not really true but in reading a few other more notable blogs on the topic, I started thinking, from the perspective of a business, social media doesn’t really change much. Businesses are still going to have to do what they’ve always done, sell a high quality product or service and provide excellent support for their customers. Social media is a tool for businesses to perform these tasks more efficiently.

When I first started experimenting with social media, I thought of it as a means to broadcast a targeted message to a large audience that was a little more receptive than most are to standard advertising. It wasn’t  until recently that I realized that this way of thinking is fundamentally wrong. Social media is really a chance for you to participate and develop meaning relationships with customers and potential customers.  It’s a convenient outlet for your customers and also a convenient way for businesses to interact with these customers and build a relationship. As with most relationships, it takes time. You have to build trust, which can be particularly difficult if you’re a business because most people are skeptical if one party has an obvious agenda. For the business, it’s to sell their product. However, if you have a good product that fills a real customer need and you’re only objective is to serve your customer by continuing to make sure your product fills that need, I think most people are willing to trust the business.

It takes some time to understand social media and I don’t think you ever completely understand it. It takes even longer to fully realize the benefits of social media. It’s not a new way to broadcast a message or a cheap way to advertise. If you take the time to develop a fundamental understanding you’ll realize how little it really changes the way you do business and only helps improve how efficiently you do business.